'V' 



A DISCOURSE 



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rr- 



fKKAl IIRD IN 



rfommemoratioii n[ the jfiilc jjrcfiidcnt, 




FIRST PARISH CHURCH. FRAMINGHAM, 



SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1881. 



By Rev. CHARLES A. HUMPHREYS. 



Thk J. C. Clark Printinc. Co., Souni !■ k \mi>'.ii.\m. Mass. 
iS8i. 



A DISCOURSE 



PREACHED IN 



l^ommemonifion of i\\{ |jiti^ ;-lrcHi(1enf, 



FIRST PARISH CHURCH, FRAMINGHAM, 



SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1881. 



By Rev. CHARLES AV HUMPHREYS. 



The J. C. Clark Printing Co., South ]''ramingham, Mass. 
1881. 






By Transfar. 



DISCOURSE. 



NEHEMIAH, VIII : 9. — '* AND WHEN NEHEMIAH SAW THAT ALL THE 
PEOPLE WEPT, HE SAID —'MOURN NOT NOR WEEP ; THIS DAY IS HOLY 
UNTO THE LORD.' " 

" There are times in the history of men and nations when 
they stand so near the vail that separates time from eternity 
that they can ahnost hear the beating and feel the pulsations 
of the heart of the Infinite. Through such a time is this 
nation now passing, when that vail has parted to admit our 
martyred President to the company of the dead heroes of the 
Republic." These were the fitting words with which James 
Abram Garfield interpreted the nation's tears when it stood 
in terror and dismay by the bier of Abraham Lincoln. How 
much more fitting are they today when the nation stands by 
the bier of that prophet-soul himself, not as then a divided 
people just lifting itself from war's gory dust, not as then in 
terror and dismay lest the whole harvest of patriotic self- 
sacrifice and glorious achievement should be blasted just 
when it was white for the garner, but a united and prosperous 
people, sure that though the first and the noblest fall, the 
Republic will suffer no detriment ! In today's calm and 
submissive grief I feel that the nation stands closer to that 
mystic vail where — as President Garfield said — " the whispers 
of God may be heard by the children of men." And if he 
could look down from his ascended height upon the nation's 
tears, and see how proportioned to the depth of its grief is 
the height of its resolve that the pure and noble purposes to 
which he gave his life shall not by his death fail of their fru- 



4 



ition, then I think that he would take up the strain of that 
elder prophet Nehemiah. who — in the words of the text — 
when he saw that all the people wept, said — "Mourn not, 
nor weep ! this day is holy unto the Lord." How certain we 
are that our loved President in his backward look would find 
the brightest part of his vision in the fact that all the people 
wept! How quick he w^ould be to see that that ruler dies not 
in vain about whose bier party spirit is breathless, and all 
dissension hushed ; along the track of whose solemn and 
silent march to the grave all the people stand with uncovered 
heads, and strew the flowers of a newly-awakened charity ! 
So, in foreign lands, the people stand in mute reverence, 
when some saint, canonized by the church and accredited 
with supernal powers is borne in effigy through the street. 
But here no superstition has made that corpse other than 
common dust, no church has issued its decree of canoniza- 
tion, no authority has ordained these shows of reverence. 
They are the spontaneous offerings of the universal heart. 
The child that can remember this day, will never cease to be 
thankful. The aged who have been spared till now will think 
they have not waited in vain. For generations yet to come, 
it will be told how the brave life and heroic death of one man 
lifted the nation to heights of pure thought and noble resolve 
unattained before ; how when the visible head of the nation's 
sovereignty fell by the blow of an assassin, then you and I 
and all of us fell down ; how there w^ere no sinccrer mourners 
for his loss than they who once had been arrayed against him in 
mortal combat ; how between the death and the funeral, there 
met at Chattanooga the representatives of those who had 
fought with and against him, and common memorial services 
were held, while a Union and a Confederate officer together 
seized the halyards and lifted the Union colors to the half- 
mast ; how President Garfield had awakened the confidence 
of the whole country in the soundness of his judgment, the 
integrity of his purpose, and the moderation of his policy; 
how he made such a brave battle with death that the world 
looked on with unstinted admiration — not only the fifty mil- 



lions of his fellow citizens whose morning and whose evening 
prayer for eighty days went up for him in constant supplica- 
tion, but the electric cords woke the silent caverns of the sea 
with their throbbing pulsations of sympathy, and stirred all 
Europe and the ancient empires of the East to an unwonted 
intensity of interest ; and how when death at last gained its 
poor victory over his torn and wasted body, his soul seemed 
transfigured before the nations, representing all the lofty 
hopes and noble ideals for which he had in life manfully 
striven, and lifting with itself the common level of humanity's 
struggles to heights of more hopeful resolve and more daring 
achievement. 

May we not then well repeat the reassuring exhortation of 
Nehemiah — " Mourn not nor weep, this day is holy unto the 
Lord." The midnight bells that rang out to the silent stars 
the tidings that that one human life was closed to earth, 
" rang: in the laro:er heart and kindlier hand " for millions 
who still live and will see to it that their loved leader did not 
die in vain. Witness, that most stirring bugle call to a 
nobler citizenship and a purer civil service, from the Mayor 
of the city of New York ! Witness, the felicitations on every 
hand that the bitterness of party spirit had been buried in 
such a broad flood of noble sympathies welling up from the 
deep places of our common humanity ! Witness, the extra- 
ordinary manifestations of fraternal feeling in other lands — 
over all England the parish bells, " whose frequent curfews 
have knelled reluctant generations to the grave," ringing 
now for the first time their sympathetic sorrow for their 
brothers across the sea ; the half-masted flags of mourning 
lifted on the cathedrals that, in the long centuries of their 
watch over the national destinies, never before wept for a 
foreign ruler ; the ancient minster, where lie the ashes of 
the nation's most honored dead, black today with the sym- 
bols of mourning for our President ; the Queen herself laying 
a flower of admiring remembrance upon the bier. Even the 
Irish malcontents, meeting in hot debate, and eager for re- 
venge, stop for a moment in their defiant wrath and send a 



6 

message of sincere regret for the stricken hero at Elberon. 
Nor are the seats of the elder civilizations silent. Rome 
sends her message of condolence, and the seven-hilled city 
that has lost its ancient empire of the world takes a loftier 
position in this empire of sympathy. Even the Sphinx that 
antedates the Pyramids, breaks for the first time its silent 
watch by the Nile to speed a message of fraternal feeling from 
the oldest to the youngest of states. And still farther East 
stretch the vibrating cords of sympathy. Indeed they circle 
the earth and for the first time in all history this great globe 
is bound together by the magnetic attraction of one humble 
life. — 

Do you ask me to explain this marvel ; these world-wide 
demonstrations that " pass the customary shows of grief ? " 
Partly it is due to the new facilities for intercourse that 
practically annihilate time and space, and by bringing the 
ends of the earth into momentary communication, make the 
interests of each a common possession. While the President 
was sick, the slightest variations in his symptoms were 
watched by both hemispheres, and when he breathed his last, 
it was as if the messenger of death w^ere knocking at all our 
doors. Before an hour had passed, millions of homes waked 
the midnight with the sounds of woe. This possibility — which 
this generation has realized for the first time in history — of 
almost instantaneous acquaintance by all the world with what 
is passing in any part, is one element of the marvel which 
we witness to-day. 

But the larger element grows out of the fact that, for the 
nrst time since it was possible for the ends of the earth to be 
in such close communication, there has been exhibited, upon 
the loftiest pedestal yet raised in sight of the world, the finest 
exemplification of the common virtues that underlie our 
whole humanity. It is not because of his exceptional quali- 
ties that the nations have been moved to applauding admira- 
tion — his powers of debate that have made him a master 
easily pre-eminent in the presentation of the issues of the last 
twenty years ; his eloquence that transfigured everything he 



touched with the transparent clearness of a prophetic insi:j;ht, 
and the healthy glow of a cultured imagination ; his breadth 
of experience compassing the varied occupations of a career 
from the log cabin of a pioneer through hard toil to the col- 
lege, the professorship, the service of his state, the defense of 
his country in the field, her counsellor in the halls of legisla- 
tion, and at last her executive head. No President ever took 
the oath of office with so broad an experience and so thorough 
a preparation in statesmanship. But it was not for these 
exceptional qualities that our nation and the world have been 
moved to such unwonted unanimity of admiration. It is 
rather for those qualities which are common to all healthy 
natures, to all true souls — his simple honesty, his warm 
affections, his faithful friendships, his robust manliness, his 
devoted patriotism, his cheerful hope in presence of death — 
it is for these qualities that dignify and exalt our common 
humanity, that the common heart has been stirred to such 
acclamations of praise. 

You call it grand and sublime, the exhibition that our 
President has displayed before the admiring world of a brave 
fight with death ; and I agree with you. Nothing grander 
nor more sublime has modern history furnished. Before it 
pale the lurid glories of martial valor. He who saved the 
day at Chickamauga more bravely lost it at Elberon. But 1 
will take you to many a humble home unknown to the wide 
world, and with no outward attractions to make you linger, 
and you shall see a nobility of soul, a patience of fortitude, a 
struggle with death, no less grand and sublime. We admire 
those things of which we have some element in ourselves, 
that stir the nobler impulses in our nature and make us feel 
a not unworthy satisfaction in our common humanity. Pres- 
ident Garfield was the exalted impersonation of the best 
qualities which become a free man in a free state ; his life 
was a typical example of an ideal Republican citizenship, so 
humble in its beginnings that no peasant would be abashed 
in the comparison, so lofty in its attainments that no king 
could boast any superior dignity. He displayed in his varied 



8 



career the limitless openings that in this country are offered 
to all who wish to serve their fellow men, to all who, con- 
scious of large endowments, are nobly ambitious to use them 
in directing the larger interests of the people. 

He was not ashamed to exhibit his loyalty to the humble 
sentiments of filial affection and conjugal devotion — senti- 
ments which, thanks to our common human nature, are almost 
universal, but which through their world-wide recognition in 
his later career, have exalted domestic life to its essential 
dignity in the eyes of the nations, and have displayed before 
them in an unwonted glory the tender beauty of motherhood, 
and of wifehood the clinging grace and heroic helpfulness. 

And of his public life, the best part was not its exceptional 
success in whatever he undertook, but his simple trust that 
if he did his duty manfully, a finer wisdom would shape its 
ends. Fidelity to the present task was his guiding star. So, 
everything he touched turned to the advantage of others and 
his own promotion. His first boyish handling of tools trans- 
formed his mother's log-cabin to a neat and convenient home. 
His first sally into a broader world along the tow-path of a 
canal made him feel the need and usefulness of a broader 
education, and he works his way through college. Then as 
if instruction were to be his profession he makes the best use 
of his acquired knowledge and becomes the President of a 
college in his native State. Then his fellow citizens asked 
him to serve them in the legislature and he accepted, and 
soon made himself a master of legislation. Then the tocsin 
of war sounded its stirring call and he enlisted and did the 
same faithful work in the field not knowing, nor over anxious, 
as to whither it would lead. Thence he was called to serve 
his fellow citizens in a higher capacity, in the halls of national 
counsel, and following again an unknown destiny, he kept 
clearly before him no lower aim than absolute fidelity to his 
opportunities of service, and at last was unexpectedly called 
to take the highest place that his countrymen could offer. 

Thus gi^'ing parts of his life to these various fields of labor, 
all was given to humanity ; ami following always a loftier 



9 



leading than human foresight could supply, he found, at last, 
that the path of his destiny was to be consummated in a 
simple and natural extension of the trust with which he had 
met the calls of his fellow men, to a trust that if he gave 
himself submissively to this final call of God his life would 
not be in vain. This latter trust was the source of his exu- 
berant cheerfulness through the deeply darkening stages of 
his pilgrimage to death. He knew that God ruled, whoever 
held or dropped the reins of earthly authority. But he could 
not have known, neither did any of us suspect, how much 
more speedily his chosen ideals would be realized by his 
death than by his life; how the common human heart, that 
has been touched as never before by his exhibition of its most 
ennobling qualities, has been lifted to finer resolves than 
were likely to be attained though he should live to a full term 
of service, and bring to their achievement an ever-ripening 
wisdom, and an ever- increasing persuasiveness of eloquent 
appeal. The cold silence of those lips is now more warmly 
eloquent. The chill touch of death has wakened to a new 
and grander life the aspirations that he sought to stir in the 
hearts of the people, and the principles that he sought to 
embody in their political legislation. His simple Christian 
manliness in those weary days of sickness did more to elevate 
the tone of public sentiment than the most splendid efforts 
of his robust health ; and now that he has gone, his remem- 
bered virtues will be more persuasive than could be his living 
voice, and the ideals that in life he could but poorly embody 
will now be invested with immortal charms. Such trans- 
forming and transfiguring power has death when it touches a 
life that is pure and true. " What is excellent, as God lives, 
is permanent." 

So, while today we must, as a people with common human 
sympathies, grieve for our common loss, we can also see that 
that prophet would be justified in his exhortation who should 
say with Nehemiah — " Mourn not nor weep ; this day is holy 
unto the Lord." God has made the wrath of man to praise 
him ; he has made that vile dastard who fired the fatal shot, 



10 

the un\vittin<;- instrument of his largest beneficence, in prov- 
ing to the world upon an arena that commands respect, that 
character is the only invulnerable shield, and that virtue 
wears the only unfading laurels; that the madness of selfish- 
ness is impotent though it strike down the head of a nation, 
while a pure devotion to noble ends will reach its reward 
though its career of earthly ambition be cut off midway to 
the goal. If, as Garfield said in the dumb dismay at Lincoln's 
death, " the whispers of God could be heard by the children 
of men," do we not now, in the hushed stillness of submissive 
sorrow, hear trumpet tones of divine inspiration, calling us to 
recognize that this day is holy unto the Lord ; a day to lift 
up devout thanksgivings that, though a life which cornmanded 
a nation's reverence and the admiration of the world has been 
so regretfully cut off, yet God reigns, and the nation lives 
stronger than ever in the bonds of fraternity that have been 
newly welded by the common sympathies of the people. 
And may we not take up the strain of glorified sorrow that 
Milton has put in the mouth of the aged Manoah, when, 
hearing that his son lay slain among the slaughtered Philis- 
tines, he lifted up his eyes, and behold ! all the people wept. 
" Come, come, no time for lamentation now, 
Nor much more cause ; Samson hath quit himself 
Like Samson, and heroically hath finished 
A life heroic, and to Israel 
Honor hath left and freedom ; to himself 
Eternal fame ; and, what is happiest yet, 
All this with God not parted from him, 
But favoring and assisting to the end. 
Nothing is here for tears ; nothing to wail, 
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise, or blame ; nothing but well and fair 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 



